TED Puts Web Video Power Into Educators' Hands With TED-Ed

Recently, TED put out a new beta that allows educators to customize lessons from the TED-Ed video library. Taking a combination of an educator's written lesson and getting a professional animator to bring it to life, TED has started building a great library of educational videos teaching a diverse group of topics. Each animated video has quizzes and other notes, and an educator using the video can follow a student's progress using the unique URL. Even better: an educator can "Flip This Lesson" and add their own questions and notes, and tailor it specifically for their class.

TED-Ed Invites Educators To 'Flip This Lesson'

Here's the TED video explaining the new program:

First off: there's a pretty fantastic feature (Get Involved) that allows you to "nominate an educator" and "recommend an animator." This means that the program will be beneficial to talented teachers and artists. Their work could end up on the site and be watched by a wide audience.

It's got a wide variety of subjects. The Arts, Business & Economics, Design, Engineering, & Technology, Health, Literature & Language, Mathematics, Philosophy & Religion, and Social Studies. Here's one of the videos that they feature in the introduction, "Just How Small Is An Atom?":

Now that's the YouTube embedded version. The TED-Ed version has quizzes to test your knowledge and tons of resources to explore in case you want to learn more about it. And it looks like it's been flipped a couple hundred times. "Flipping" allows other educators who want to take this lesson and make their own quizzes and notes and tailor it specifically to their own class. They can title it differently, and add/remove questions and resources.

Students can track their progress if they want, seeing how far they got into the lesson, number of questions they got right, etc. What's even better is that the flipped version can be shared with students' e-mail, and the teacher can track how well a student is progressing on a particular subject because each new flipped version has its own URL.

And oh yeah, there's another great feature: any video from TED, TED X, and YouTube can be flipped for educational purposes.

TED does say that this is supplemental educational material, so it's not a substitute for an entire lesson. But still, I feel like this is the wave of the future for education. There will be a database of videos for every topic you can think of in the near future. If only they had this stuff when I was in school. Go check it out.

Chris Atkinson joined ReelSEO in 2011. He is a longtime film and television reviewer, and has almost two decades of experience in the theater industry.

http://de.wetours.com ThailandReisen

This is just awesome! Brains + talent + money can create something really awesome that can have a positive impact on the education of... well, everyone with internet access. Scalable education innovation!

http://www.videoleadsonline.com/ videoleadsonline

From when I checked it out... it appears to be less about combining other videos together and more about using existing videos and using or removing quiz questions & changing out the preamble or purpose of the 'lesson' for your particular focus - what you want others to get out of the 'lesson'/video.

More quize options only on the ones they choose as 'featured' less options ready for the ones you might choose from YouTube.

DanSafkow

Love this! Does anyone know of a video player/platform that will allow users to embed quizes in their own videos?

http://www.reelseo.com/ reelseo

@DanSafkow hmm... good idea. Im not aware of any but Im sure a developer could build a plugin for JW player to do it

videoleadsonline

From when I checked it out... it appears to be less about combining other videos together and more about using existing videos and using or removing quiz questions & changing out the preamble or purpose of the 'lesson' for your particular focus - what you want others to get out of the 'lesson'/video.

More quize options only on the ones they choose as 'featured' less options ready for the ones you might choose from YouTube.

DanSafkow

Love this! Does anyone know of a video player/platform that will allow users to embed quizes in their own videos?

http://www.reelseo.com/ reelseo

@DanSafkow hmm... good idea. Im not aware of any but Im sure a developer could build a plugin for JW player to do it